Carson Manger and Seth Guillozet started the game big with matching three’s, but then fouls started to pile up for Ft. Loramie as they were called for six straight fouls and New Bremen was able to capitalize with baskets from Justin Heitkamp and Luke Schwieterman off turnovers to grab a 7-3 lead with five minutes left. The rest of the quarter neither team wanted to give in as Jason Streib nailed a three at the buzzer to tie the game at 15-all.

The back and forth scoring continued in the second quarter as New Bremen scored on four straight layups in the final three minutes and the biggest came with six seconds left in the half when Luke Schwieterman stole the inbounds pass and went in for a layup to close the score to 32-31 at halftime in favor of Ft. Loramie.

“That steal by Luke (Schwieterman) at the end of the half was huge,” Dougherty said. “He is a kid who never stops playing and he competes the whole 32 minutes. He has real good awareness, toughness and knows what is going on and paying attention to the scouting report and knowing what they are going to run and then having the awareness of making a play. That was also a big momentum swing. We go into the half with momentum it is easier to coach at halftime.”

The third quarter saw the Cardinals take off. In the first three minutes the Redskins were 0-1 from the field and had three turnovers and New Bremen took advantage as they went on an 8-0 run to grab a 39-32 lead with 5:19 left. The rest of the quarter New Bremen outscored the Redskins 15-10 to lead 54-44 after three quarters of play.

“They were crashing down on the post when we threw it in in the first half and we were a little quick with it,” Dougherty said. “In the second half we either made a decisive move or let the help clear and kicked it back out and got it back inside. Also the big players when they didn’t get touches kept crashing the boards.

“We were not so passive on both ends of the floor in the second half,” Dougherty said. “Defensively we kept them in front more and stopped getting beat on the dribble. We also played a little more disciplined on defense. Our defense always seems to affect how we play offensively.”

In the final eight minutes the Cardinals managed to match Ft. Loramie to seal the 76-62 victory.

“We got the shots we wanted to get tonight,” Dougherty said. “We executed pretty well and we made good adjustments as they made adjustments. The kids did a good job of understanding what they were in and what we needed to do to attack it.”